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Changing climates 

While the Bush administration continues to avoid any substantive policies to combat climate change, there are straws in the wind of a changing mood in the US. For example, Exxon has just given Stanford $100 million to help establish a programme on alternative energy technologies. Unlike Shell and BP, which have tried hard in the last few years to position themselves as environmentally aware, Exxon and the other US oil majors have instead traditionally pumped money into campaigns to deny the seriousness of global warming.

Outside the US, of course, the gravity of the issue is becoming increasingly clear. Those bastions of radical polemic, the National Trust and the Royal Horticultural Society, produced a report this week detailing the impact of climate change on Britain’s gardens. “The UK’s whole reputation as a green and pleasant land is under threat,” said one of the authors. And Network Rail, which owns the railway infrastructure in the UK, warned this week that railways face growing problems from flash floods and high winds as climate change brings the “wrong kind of weather”.

The Fox nation 

“We’re the Fox Nation, making Murdoch, with a little critical interpretation, our leader.” A worrying report from Michael Wolff on the state of media in America.

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